


tell me don't so i can crawl back

by oopshidaisy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alley Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Episode: s05e18 Point of No Return, F/F, First Time, Fix-It of Sorts, Pining, Semi-Public Sex, i made them lesbians you know the drill, switching POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25287982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oopshidaisy/pseuds/oopshidaisy
Summary: “For what it’s worth, Cas,” Dean said, and Cas jolted in place, snapping her eyes up to meet Dean’s, “last person who looked at me like that took me to bed.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32





	tell me don't so i can crawl back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GLDunnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GLDunnell/gifts).



> this is the first thing i've written since receiving a degree in english literature and creative writing. hate that for me
> 
> written for gemma, love of my life, as an apology for getting her back into supernatural in the year of our lord 2020. thank or blame her accordingly, since without her this wouldn't exist
> 
> title from mitski's 'first love / late spring'

_-C-_

“Where will she have gone?” Castiel asked, struggling to sit up. Sam was by her side as soon as he noticed the movement, pushing her back down with gentle hands. Human skin had always felt cool to her, and now it was like a balm on her varied aches and pains. There was nothing, however, to soothe the ache of Dean’s departure, coupled with the knowledge of what she surely planned to do.

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “I know Dean. She won’t summon Michael straight away. There’s still time for you to get better.”

Castiel tilted her head, ignoring the dizziness the motion induced. The grimy colors of the motel room swam before her eyes; her Grace was so depleted as to be almost useless, a dull ember out of her reach.

“For what reason would she waste time?” she asked. Her voice sounded rough, even to her own ears. “Has she not committed to her course of action?”

“No, she has,” Sam sighed. “The idiot’s definitely planning on giving herself up to Michael, but it’s a – sentimental human thing. There’s stuff she’ll want to do first. People she’ll want to see.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Oh, don’t give me that,” Sam said. “Maybe it works on Dean, your whole ‘ _I am so far above you stupid humans and don’t understand your ways’_ , but I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. You got _drunk_ yesterday, Cas. And the way you feel about Dean – I’d go out on a limb and say that’s not particularly angelic, is it?”

Castiel drew back, something not-quite-bile rising in her throat. Against all odds, her heart thudded too fast.

“All I _feel_ for _Dean_ is irritation,” she snapped.

Sam shrugged, pushing his hair out of his face. “Right now, I’m pretty irritated at her, too. But I still love her.”

Castiel sank back onto the bed, closing her eyes. “I must rest,” she said.

“You’re going to sleep?”

“No,” Cas murmured. “You might refer to it as a – trance. A healing trance, if you will.”

When he next spoke, Sam’s voice was further away. “No wonder Dean says you angels are from the planet Vulcan.”

Castiel thought about saying aloud, ‘ _I don’t understand the reference_ ,’ but her protests never made any impact on the Winchesters’ propensity for filtering their experiences through the lens of human media. So instead she allowed herself to drift, focusing on the damage done to her human vessel and allowing her Grace to spread, slowly but surely, through the form.

As she healed, she thought of the moment earlier that day when Dean had tossed her a bottle of aspirin, wry smile tugging at her lips. She’d hated seeing Castiel drunk, that much had been obvious. It was understandable; Cas hadn’t been as useful as she should have been in that state. And yet – it wasn’t precisely a revelation that Dean had a caretaking streak a mile wide. The way she treated her younger brother was evidence enough of that. It was only that Cas couldn’t pinpoint the moment when she had become someone Dean wanted to look after. It should have been disrespectful, blasphemous, for Dean to even entertain the notion that someone like Castiel needed someone to – to lean on when she was bleeding, someone who’d hold her up and squeeze her hand tightly in theirs.

But, of course, she did.

*

At one point she became vaguely conscious of being moved, but could sense no harmful intent in the action and thus continued the trance. It wasn’t until Sam shook her back to full awareness that she opened her eyes, taking in the interior of a car she didn’t recognize.

“We’re here,” Sam said. “She’s in room thirty-seven.”

“How do you know?” Cas rasped out. She felt better, and stronger, than she had at the previous motel, but there was still a slight ache in her head. She levered herself out of the backseat and into the glare of yet another nondescript motel parking lot.

“Trust me.” Sam’s voice was tight. “I asked the guy at the reception, and he had a _lot_ to say about her.”

“Why?” Cas asked, wondering what Dean might have done to draw attention to herself – if she might not have stuck to Sam’s timeline after all, and was already host to Michael’s consciousness.

Sam fixed her with a disbelieving stare. “Some men have been known to find my sister attractive,” he said flatly. “And they can be…effusive about it.”

Cas felt a flash of annoyance, or something stronger than annoyance, something that made the skin of her vessel prickle uncomfortably. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her trench coat so that Sam wouldn’t see them clenching.

“I see,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “And does he often freely give out the room numbers of guests he finds attractive to strangers?”

“Yeah, Cas, don’t smite the guy just yet,” Sam replied. “Not until we’ve got Dean somewhere safe.”

Cas followed him towards the peeling green door with the number thirty-seven hanging over the peephole. She could sense Dean’s presence in the room, could see the confused determination hanging dark and heavy over her soul. Again, her hands clenched.

“Wait out here,” Sam murmured. They were within a few paces of the door, Dean’s spirit seeming to draw Cas inexorably closer. She stopped short, not without effort. “Come in and, you know, whammy her with your angel magic if I need help.”

“ _Whammy_ her?” Cas repeated.

“Send her to sleep,” Sam said. “Knock her out, whatever. I’m hoping I can talk some sense into her, but…you know Dean. Sense has a way of not getting through to her.”

“I would be inclined to agree,” Cas said, feeling a curl of true, heavenly rage at the memory of the way Dean had careened off without so much as a backward glance. “But I believe it would save time to take her somewhere she cannot harm herself or others.”

“You mean Bobby’s?”

Castiel inclined her head.

“Yeah, sure, whisk her to Bobby’s. He’ll want to have words with her.”

“Perhaps he will have more luck than we did.”

Sam gave her a sympathetic look before he strode forward and let himself into the motel room. Even if he hadn’t left the door open, Castiel would have been able to hear the conversation that ensued.

“So this is the grand Dean Winchester farewell tour,” Sam was saying.

And then came Dean’s reply, her voice rough and low. “How did you find me?”

“Figured you’d make a stop here. Drove past the graveyard on our way into town. They’re beautiful flowers, for such short notice.”

“Yeah, well, excuse me if I wanted to say bye to Mom before I go.”

“Only, thing is, Dean – you don’t have to go. And you certainly don’t have to go running off, saying goodbye to Mom but not me and–”

“You would’ve tried to stop me, Sammy. You who knows a thing or two about running away from their problems.”

“You think I haven’t learned my lesson by now? Seriously, when has leaving caused anyone anything but pain? We’re better when we stick together. You _know_ that.”

“This is different.” Cas could almost picture the way Dean would look as she said that: the stubborn jut of her chin, the crease between her eyebrows.

“It doesn’t have to be.” Sam’s voice was desperate. “We can still fix this. Bobby and I have been working on something, and…”

“If you’d figured something out you’d have told me. You got nothing, Sammy, and you’re lying to me.”

There was a sigh that could have originated from either of them.

“I’ll have to stop you,” Sam said.

“I’d like to see you try.”

“This doesn’t have to end in a fight.”

“Like you’d have any chance of taking me now you’re not all hopped up on demon blood.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve got someone more powerful than either of us in my corner.”

Cas took that as her cue, materializing behind Dean and grabbing her by the wrist, unfurling her wings and landing both of them in the abode of a mildly surprised Bobby Singer. In the time it took for Cas to go back and retrieve Sam, Dean had already started pacing, and she spun to fix Castiel with an accusatory glare.

“ _You_ of all people should know that this is the only option.”

Castiel’s mouth parted with shock. “No,” she said. “You are alone in this course of action, and have no hope of convincing either myself or anyone else in this room to go along with your scheme.”

Dean was breathing heavily, almost a pant. Her face was splotched red with anger. She was beautiful, Cas thought, not for the first time. It was curious to find a human beautiful, particularly one such as Dean, who paid only cursory attention to her physical appearance – but Castiel had known from the start, as soon as she had seen the glow of Dean’s soul in the depths of Hell.

Angels were not built to feel multiple conflicting emotions at once. Cas found herself thrown off-balance by the combination of her rage and her devotion, but if her feelings were apparent on her face it didn’t matter. Dean had turned to direct her wrath towards her brother.

“We’ve spent the last year trying to avoid this shit,” she was saying, advancing on Sam. “And it’s all been for nothing! Every step we take, Lucifer and Michael are ahead. They say it’s inevitable, and you know what? I don’t believe in fate, but I can see well enough when the odds are stacked against us.”

“There’s always another way,” Sam replied, and even Castiel could acknowledge that it was, comparatively, a weak argument.

“This has always been about saving people, right?” Dean insisted. “Well, this is the way that saves the most people. This is the closest we’ll get to a happy ending.”

Cas backed into the corner of the room, arms crossed defensively across her chest. Sam sank heavily into a chair, seeming to all the world as though the energy had been cut clean out of him.

It was a long few moments before Bobby, seated behind his desk, spoke.

“Well, if this ain’t just the saddest little congregation I’ve ever had the displeasure to watch darken my doorway.”

“Bobby—” Dean started, only to stop when he held a hand up.

“I’m not interested, girlie. You’ve given up, and so far as I’m concerned that’s worse than either of these two sad-sacks.”

“I’m not _giving up_ ,” Dean muttered sullenly. “I just know that this is about more than whether _I_ make it through. Hell, that’s why Cas even pulled me up in the first place.” She didn’t look at Castiel when she said it, eyes flitting instead between Sam and Bobby. Her voice was rising steadily, stopping just short of a shout. “So I could give my life for the greater good. Well, this is me, giving it. I’ll be saving a hell of a lot of people, so just you try and make me feel like shit for it.”

Cas didn’t hear what Bobby said in response. There was something building in her skull, a pressure coupled with a whine of noise that signified nothing good. She gasped out a breath, and instantly Dean was by her side, just shy of touching.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something’s happening,” Cas said.

“Where?”

_-D-_

Cas disappeared without answering her question, and Dean snorted.

“Typical,” she said, running a hand through the bedraggled mess of her hair. “Who fuckin’ knows when she’ll be back.”

“She wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t important,” Sam said.

“Like hell she wouldn’t,” Dean muttered. She knew it was unfair to Cas, who’d given them more help than they deserved, but at this particular moment the abandonment stung. Even if it was her who’d abandoned Cas first.

Her life was insane, she knew that. For a while, as a teenager mostly, she’d welcomed the chaos and the badassery and the heroics, but anything got too much after you’d been doing it a few decades. Getting to her thirties without a home, without ever managing a relationship that lasted longer than a night, without a high school diploma – it didn’t exactly take advanced psychology to explain the way she’d welcomed one form of constancy into her life, in the form of maybe the most naïve angel Heaven ever managed to produce.

So, from the start, she’d imprinted a little. She could admit that much, but she knew that Cas had imprinted right back, and now they were up one increasingly agnostic celestial being.

With the thud of a looming headache in her skull, she headed over to Bobby’s stash of whiskey and helped herself to a glass. She knocked it back with her throat open, skipping out on the taste and leaving herself only with the burn.

It was while she was pouring her second glass that Castiel reappeared, with a body in tow. Her trench coat was caked in mud and blood, and there was a scrape across her cheek, already knitting itself back together as Dean watched. And the body – at first, Dean couldn’t make heads nor tails of who it was, with the grime covering their every inch. It was only when Sam gasped out, “Adam,” that the reality hit her.

“Adam _who_?” Bobby asked.

“The other Winchester sibling,” Dean said. It came out quieter than she intended. “What the _fuck_ , Cas?”

*

Cas was light on details about where she’d been, not deigning to explain the blood no matter how much Dean bitched at her about it. All Cas would say was that Adam needed to be hidden from the other angels, right now as in immediately.

Dean stood back while Cas did her Enochian sigil hoodoo, but not so far that she didn’t notice how exhausted Cas still looked. Some of it was probably the aftereffects of yesterday’s bender and ass-whooping, but she knew there was more to it. The apocalypse was taking its toll on all of them, no doubt about it, but Cas was a special case. If she’d just stuck to the almighty plan, toed the line, she wouldn’t even be in this mess. It was hard to comprehend just how much she’d given up, all for – what, exactly? Humans? Dean didn’t understand it – didn’t understand _her_ – at the best of times.

Adam came to with a groan of pain, struggling against Cas’ hands. His eyes cracked open.

“Who—? Where—?”

“Uh, not sure how much you remember, kid,” Dean said. “But we’re John Winchester’s other kids, you’re our baby brother, and we’re dealing with an apocalypse sorta situation, here.”

“Go ahead and ease him into it gently, Dean,” Sam muttered.

“The angels warned me about you,” Adam said, pulling himself to a seated position. Cas wrinkled her nose in irritation but backed off. “Where the fuck is Zachariah?”

“Right,” Dean said, “so there’s a lotta explaining to do. But Zachariah’s pretty much the worst, first of all. And Cas here’s hidden you from him, so that’s one thing we don’t gotta worry about. Now how’s about we get you cleaned up, because no offence, but you smell like death.”

*

Dean found herself across from Cas while Adam explained the circumstances of his death and resurrection. For all that she was a celestial being who could kill a demon just by touching them, it was always comforting to see that Cas had the worst poker face Dean had ever seen on a human being. Sometimes, there was nothing else to do but watch every emotion, every reaction, play out on Cas’ face with less subtlety than a Michael Bay film.

So what if it sometimes made it hard to focus on important shit, like her newly alive brother explaining how he came to be not-dead. Cas was nice to look at, partly because the vessel she’d chosen had this sort of messy halo of dark waves framing her face as well as a ridiculously cute smattering of freckles dotted over high cheekbones, but mostly because she was _Cas_ , and Dean had a private theory that the shock-blue of her eyes was all her, supported by the fact that when she’d been briefly acquainted with Jamie Novak her eyes hadn’t been half as bright.

“They told me I’m important,” Adam was saying when Dean finally tuned back in. “That me and some archangel are gonna kill the Devil. Michael, that’s what its name was. I’m his, uh, sword or vessel or something, I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s horseshit,” Dean said.

“It might not be,” said Cas. Her brows were furrowed. “Adam is of the same bloodline as you, and some angels have—” She paused, clearly thinking the next words through carefully. “—gender preferences.”

“You think Michael’s passing me up because I’m a _girl_?” Dean burst out.

“A woman,” Cas corrected absently. “Maybe.”

“Okay, so that’s—” Sam started.

“It is also possible,” Cas said, “that the angels wrongly assumed that Dean would continue to have the strength of character to withstand them, and picked a more susceptible vessel.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Dean snapped.

“Stop it, you two,” Sam said. “Think about it. After all this talk about ‘destiny’, you think the guys upstairs are suddenly breaking out a plan B? That doesn’t seem right to me.”

“You have a point,” Cas replied, aiming a twitch that was almost a smile in Sam’s direction. Dean felt her hackles rise. It wasn’t often that Sam and Cas ganged up against her, that they got to act like they were in on some plan that she had no part of, or was an inconvenience towards. She fixed her face into an expression that wasn’t _petulant_ , exactly, but was the kind of look that always used made her dad call her a bitch, and stalked out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Sam called after her.

“For a walk,” she shot back, wishing she could hold back the heat from her cheeks by force of will alone.

She got as far as the door before Castiel appeared in front of her.

“We can’t let you leave,” she said, quiet but with enough force that Dean knew testing her wasn’t advisable.

Then, because she was her, she did it anyway.

_-C-_

Cas stood sentinel outside Bobby’s panic room – although it might have been more truthful at this point to call it a cell – feeling as unmoored as she had all day. Restraining Dean and getting her into the cell hadn’t taken an undue expenditure of effort, but the emotional ramifications of Dean’s glaring and yelling were…well, not unexpected, but unpleasant all the same.

Dean had a tendency to take the phrase ‘caged animal’ to heart, and Castiel was aware of her incessant pacing and cursing, even with the heavy metal door between them.

The whole situation was, as so many things about Dean Winchester were, baffling. She must have known she wouldn’t be able to evade Castiel, and yet she hadn’t backed down when Cas had warned her, had struggled in vain until, as a last resort, Sam had suggested the panic room.

“I know you can hear me,” Dean said. “Never knew that all this time you wanted to play prison warden so badly. You’re not very good at it. I can hear all your overthinking and guilt from in here.”

Cas knew better than to respond. If she allowed Dean an inch, a mile would be gone before she even noticed.

“If you’re gonna keep me locked up the least you can do is entertain me,” Dean went on. “Come in here, read me a bedtime story. Make it one about the girl who could’ve saved the world and didn’t because of her emotionally repressed guardian angel and her dumbass brother.”

Castiel might have objected to the characterization of herself as emotionally repressed. On the contrary, she cataloged her emotions precisely and efficiently, and rarely burdened anyone else with them. Her feelings for Dean often struggled against the box she had placed them in, but their bond was hardly unusual considering the experiences they had shared together. The humans might characterize it as love – or, at least, Sam had implied as much – but Cas had never heard of such a thing, an angel loving anyone apart from God. Even the familial bond between angels was never given such a label.

“How’s she doing?” Sam asked, rounding the corner. He looked harried; Adam was on house arrest, too, but locking him up would have been counterproductive.

“She is not amenable to the situation,” Cas said.

“Right, well,” Sam said. “Let’s open up, I need to talk to her.”

Castiel obliged, keeping her distance when Sam stepped into the cell. Dean had shed her leather jacket at some point during her incessant pacing, and it lay crumpled on the ground, leaving her in only the muted green tank top that matched eerily with the shade of her eyes. There were slices of uneven tan lines over her chest and arms.

“For what it’s worth, Cas,” Dean said, and Cas jolted in place, snapping her eyes up to meet Dean’s, “last person who looked at me like that took me to bed.”

Dean’s face often refused to give anything away just when Cas needed it to most. One of her eyebrows was up, and there was a mocking lilt to her tone, but Cas failed to grasp the joke. It would not have been the first time Dean had made a joke at the expense of Cas’ sexuality or perceived lack thereof, but it was the first time Dean had made reference to herself as an object of desire.

Unable to think of a suitable response, she lifted herself to the first floor to help Bobby watch Adam.

She could hear the argument between the siblings downstairs, could hear Dean blaming herself for the deaths of her family and friends with seemingly little thought to the unique circumstances of her life and the lives of her allies. There was no convincing her to forgive herself, that much was clear.

If Sam couldn’t get through to her, Cas knew that she had no hope of doing so. Particularly not now, when her anger towards Dean almost exceeded her compassion.

She sank heavily onto the couch, clasping her hands together in an approximation of the human gesture of prayer. Useless as she knew it would be to attempt to communicate with God, she hoped He was listening.

*

When Sam returned upstairs, there were unshed tears glistening in his eyes. Dean had once confided that although it was easy to win arguments against her brother, it often left her feeling worse than if she lost. Cas could understand the sentiment; Sam’s sadness had a tendency to permeate a room. Even Adam, fresh off his fifteenth attempt to sneak out, affected a look of sympathy.

“How’s she doing?” Bobby asked.

Sam’s only response was a half-shrug, a movement containing within it no small amount of defeat.

Bobby sighed. “Alright, Cassie, you’re up.”

Cas disliked being called Cassie, although Dean had assured her it was meant with affection. Before meeting Dean, she had only ever thought of herself as Castiel, or more precisely the completed sigil that spelled out her name. Somehow, the affectionate manner with which Dean had started calling her Cas had lodged itself irrevocably in her own conception of self. It was yet another way in which Dean had changed her, in a way that came across as almost thoughtless, as though Dean was entirely unaware of her impact upon Castiel’s very being.

She slipped obediently from the room, returning once more to her post outside Dean’s temporary prison, wondering why she never felt comfortable enough in this house to linger. Each room made her feel like an intruder, even as its occupants never professed to wish her anything but welcome.

There was silence from within Dean’s cell, not even the sounds of her shoes against the ground. It was unlike her to remain stationary for very long.

Castiel withstood the silence for the better part of an hour. She did not tire, weaken, or require movement, but the longer the silence stretched on, the more unsettled she felt. It was inconceivable that Sam would have assisted his sister in an escape, but the lack of commentary from Dean could only suggest her absence. In all the time she had known her, Cas had never known Dean to go more than ten minutes without talking, even in sleep.

She eased the door open.

_-D-_

Dean’s brain was engaged in a knock-down, drag-out battle between mind-numbing boredom and sheer goddamn adrenaline. She’d thought Cas would check on her sooner, what with the angel’s near-pathological need to make sure Dean was safe, as if dragging her out of Hell had been a way of making an investment and she needed regular reassurance of its returns. There was another explanation, but she didn’t let herself think about that one often.

She’d been crouched beside the door so long that her knees were aching and her palms were slick with anxious sweat, mingling with the blood seeping sluggishly out of the cut in the center of her right hand. The sigil she’d managed to paint on the wall glistened red and, the longer Cas went without entering, mocking.

Briefly, she considered crying out for help, but Cas wasn’t inclined to trust her right now. It was for good reason, she supposed, but it was a real damper on her plan to finally get this show on the road.

Better her to pay the price than Adam. Better her to pay the price than the world. 

She heard the creak of the panic room door’s hinges, the protest of the metal against Castiel’s angelic strength. As she’d suspected, Cas only opened it a crack at first, the suspicious bitch. She’d overturned the chair to ensure that Cas actually came in to investigate, and Cas played her part beautifully, right down to the sickening betrayal in her eyes when she caught sight of the sigil.

“No—” Her hand was outstretched, but Dean was quick enough to slap her own onto the bloody marks, which shone almost as brightly as Cas did before she disappeared with a scream. It wasn’t just a scream to alert Sam; it was, undeniably, a scream of pain.

There wasn’t time to waste feeling shitty. Dean had to assume the other occupants of the house had heard the commotion, but she didn’t plan on sticking around to find out. She darted out of her cell and out through the cellar doors, not so much as glancing behind her before she dove into the Impala and screeched out of the drive.

*

By the time she got to town it was dark, streets slick with lingering rain and a smell in the air like pollution. Dean shivered; she’d never bothered to pick her jacket back up, and a spring evening in South Dakota was no joke.

She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, trying to project as much of an air of ‘do not fuck with me’ as any woman walking alone at night could hope to. It was after ten minutes of aimless wandering, sending up vague prayers to Michael, that she heard the promising shouts of some idiot talking about Armageddon.

“Hey,” she said, jogging towards the man. His howling went down in volume as his eyes raked over her, and Dean scoffed. “I’m Dean Winchester, get your eyes off my tits. I assume you know who I am?”

The man nodded.

“I’m gonna need you to pray for me, okay? There’s a dickhead angel I’m trying to get in touch with, wants to get all up in this and ice Lucifer. So can you get him on the line?”

He nodded again, more eagerly, and launched into the Lord’s prayer, which – Dean wasn’t going to question his methods, since it wasn’t like she had anything better going on, but it did seem a little basic. He also – and she realized this too late – probably should have addressed Michael specifically.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name / Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven / Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our—” He cut himself off with a yelp just as Dean felt the rustle of wind behind her that she’d learned to associate with an angel’s arrival.

Of course, she’d learned to associate it with a very _specific_ angel’s arrival.

“Shit,” she said, right as Cas reached across her and knocked the street preacher out. When she dared to look, Cas’ face was tight with wordless fury, wrath burning in her eyes. It was an anger so intense it wasn’t human, elevated Cas’ human vessel to something more, something terrifying and otherworldly beautiful.

Dean stood her ground for all of two seconds, and then Cas was grabbing her by the upper arm and dragging her into an alley, fingers tight on the – oh, God – the impression of her handprint that still marked Dean’s skin, the handprint that had raised Dean from Hell.

If Cas was trying to make her feel guilty, she was doing an unnervingly good job of it.

She shoved Dean roughly against the wall, bricks scraping against Dean’s exposed skin. She braced herself for – something: a punch, a bolt of divine wrath, a hand around her throat. Cas’ breath was coming out quick, labored, perhaps because of wherever Dean had sent her and how quickly she’d managed to come back, perhaps because of the force of her rage.

“You are who I rebelled for,” Cas said, voice low and dangerous and, unfortunately, because Dean was still human, hot. “And this is how you repay me? By running, _like a coward_ , into Michael’s arms? By _surrendering_ when things get _hard_?”

Her hand was so tight on Dean’s arm, without a hint of the temperance of Cas’ usual physical interaction with humans.

“Cas, fuck,” Dean gasped, and the grip gentled, even if Cas’ expression did not.

“I gave everything for you,” Cas said. The words were quiet but precisely enunciated. Dean’s gaze dipped to her mouth, mostly as a way to avoid looking her in the eye.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to,” she said, eyes prickling. “I’m sorry, Cas. I really am.”

Cas hissed out a breath and brought her left arm up to press across Dean’s collarbones, keeping her pinned to the wall. As if Dean had any thoughts of escape at this moment, watching Cas entirely lose control.

“I wanted you to,” she said eventually. “I wanted to have something to live for, something that wasn’t—” Dean chanced a look back up at her eyes. They weren’t wet; Dean didn’t even know if angels _could_ cry, human vessel or not, but there was a pain deeper than tears swimming within them. “I should have known you would disappoint me.”

The words were like a slap in the face – _worse_ , in fact. The prickling in her eyes got worse, and she sniffed lest her nose start running. She hadn’t felt this weak since before her father had died.

So it was without looking at Cas that she said, “If you want to smite me, or whatever, you should just do it. One less chess piece for Michael and Lucifer to move about. I get it.”

“Dean.”

Dean tipped her head back against the rain-damp wall, her throat exposed. She wondered if Cas could see the way her pulse was racing.

And then one of Cas’ legs was between hers.

“I want you alive,” Cas said, slow, heavy with meaning.

“You mean,” Dean swallowed, understanding dawning, “you _want_ me alive?”

She opened her eyes. Cas was closer than before, so close their noses were almost touching. So close that she would only have to tilt her chin, and—

It was her who made the first move, probably. It wasn’t so much that she made the decision as it was that she started kissing Cas before she could even begin to think why it was a bad idea. And it was, of course, an insanely bad idea, because she knew better than to think she could make Cas forgive her by fucking her, and there wasn’t a chance in Hell that it’d somehow help with averting the Apocalypse. Still. Last night on Earth, and all that.

She was still pretty well immobilized by the dual restraints of Cas’ left arm and right hand, but she managed to hook two fingers into Cas’ belt loop, pulling her flush.

For five long seconds, the kiss was close-mouthed and hard, as unyielding as the brick still scratching against Dean’s back. Then Cas gasped, lips parting, and lifted the arm that had been restraining Dean’s chest to run a hand through her hair, tugging so the angle was better.

Working on instinct, on muscle memory, Dean ground down on the leg between hers, just mindlessly seeking a way to relieve the pressure. Logically, she should have been freezing, but her skin felt overheated and electric, warmed by each touch of Cas’ hands.

“You doin’ that on purpose?” she asked, pulling back and then sucking on Cas’ bottom lip, getting a hand underneath her shirt.

“After all you have done,” Cas said, and her voice was deep, almost hoarse, “dying of hypothermia would lack—”

She was cut off by Dean’s mouth, by Dean rucking up her shirt and muttering, “I _knew_ you didn’t wear a bra.”

“I found it restrictive,” Cas huffed. Her shirt was too tight to allow for much motion, and the alleyway was too exposed for Dean to feel comfortable undoing the buttons and peeling it off.

“Fuck, we could not have picked a worse place,” she murmured. “Hey, Cas, I’m flying blind here. With your body…”

“It is much the same as any other human body,” Cas said. “Touch will induce similar responses as it would in any other human.”

“Real sexy talk, thanks babe,” Dean said, and kissed her again to cover for the fact that – God help her – she actually did find it sexy, because it was _Cas_. When she pulled back, Cas was frowning, the small, harmless kind of frown that teasing her always produced. Dean almost laughed with relief to see it.

She ran fingers down Cas’ neck, toying with the collar of her shirt before she dipped to suck the skin there between her lips.

“You can’t—” Cas choked out, hips stuttering against Dean’s. “It won’t leave a mark.”

“Not trying to,” Dean murmured, rubbing reassuring circles into the skin just above Cas’ waistline. “Just trying to make you feel good.”

Cas made a sound at that, breathy and low, and pulled Dean up by her hair to kiss her again, with a single-minded intensity that almost made Dean forget where they were, and all the reasons not to.

“Make me come,” she gasped. “Please, I just need you to, please.”

It was almost – Dean felt some new sensation in amongst the pleasure of Cas’ kiss, like a wave of power that swept her into its hold, and then she was crying out and her body was tensing all over, and it was like being electrocuted only it was the best thing she’d ever felt.

When her eyes opened, she saw that Cas had pulled away and was watching her with a curious, almost clinical expression.

“Did you just,” and Dean found that she had to take a moment to get her breath back, chest heaving as though she’d just run several miles, “did you just give me some kind of freaky _mind-meld orgasm_?”

“I – apologize, if it was not what you—”

“No, baby, that was so hot, oh my God. Come back here.” When she stepped back into Dean’s space, Dean pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of her lips. “Why the fuck is that even a power that angels have?”

“I was not sure it would be effective,” Cas admitted. “It is similar to what might be referred to as divine revelation.”

“Well, that’s incredibly sacrilegious,” Dean grinned. “I love it. I can, uh – I can return the favor if you feel like taking us back to Bobby’s.”

She knew it was a risk, because whatever spell had come over them in this alley might not last, and Dean knew that full well. She wanted to hang onto it a little longer, but she also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spread Cas out on a real bed, to take her out of those ridiculous clothes.

She could see the same conflict playing out on Cas’ face, still so close to hers.

After their shared moment of indecision, Cas stepped back, threaded their fingers together, and they were off.

**Author's Note:**

> i never watched spn until a week ago. like, i went this long without getting sucked in and then i VOLUNTARILY descended into hell. press f (or comment) to pay respects
> 
> i'm on tumblr [here](https://morgans-starks.tumblr.com/) and twitter [here](https://twitter.com/oopshidaisy)


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